The 2 Johnnies unleash their love letter to Tipp

The 2 Johnnies are out the gap on 2fm on Friday as their drivetime show comes to an end after two years and they’ll also got a new album to plug. The Tipp comedy duo talk to Alan Corr

It’s three hours before airtime on Tuesday and just two days before the red light blinks out for the last time on The 2 Johnnies’ very successful drive time radio show on 2fm.

Ireland’s favourite good ole boys, livewire Johnny “Smacks” McMahon (34, Roscrea) and chilled-out Johnny “B” O’Brien (37, Cahir) are sitting in a breakout room in RTÉ’s now rather forlorn radio centre as one chapter in their unstoppable rise comes to an end.

The big news is that the pair are set to leave the station on Friday. They’re certainly leaving with their show in rude health – the latest round of JNLR figures revealed that Drive It with The 2 Johnnies had 151,000 daily listeners.

They’re out the gap at 2fm (which marks its 45th anniversary on the day of their departure) but they still have a LOT going on – there’s their hugely successful podcast, their gig in Dublin’s St Anne’s Park next week, a sold-out show at the 3Arena this December, an upcoming mini-tour of America and maybe the possibility of another TV show on RTÉ later this year. Oh, and then there’s their hurling commitments back home.

And now, there can only be the album. It’s a 14-track collection of ribald mischief-making and country rock, trad madness called Small Town Heroes. It has a record cover that pays homage to Dookie by Green Day and it is just the latest adventure in an empire-building, island-hopping quest for world domination by the two old friends from Tipp who have become Ireland’s most successful comedy duo.

In short, it is an entire concept album about “drinkin’, ridin’, GAA, and life in a small town”. It features a moving tale of falling for a girl whose da might just be in the IRA, a regular Pogues-like hoolie (written around the time of Shane MacGowan’s death) called The Woman From Ballaghaderreen, a paean to auld lads in pubs and, perhaps best of all, it has the good grace to rhyme “the Virgin Mary” with “Mariah Carey”.

“We’re big fans of Pure Mule and every episode is a weekend from a different person’s perspective so this album is like that,” says Johnnie B, the slightly more serious and deep-thinking one. “These songs are about all the people in our town.”

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“Some names have been changed,” chimes in Johnny Smacks, the more boyo-ish one. “There will be questions asked in the pub on Saturday night, I’ll be watching my back . . . “

Johnnie B was in a covers band and he can sing; Johnnie Smacks wasn’t and, well, he can’t. “Sure, we just both horse into it!” Johnnie Smacks says like a true pro.

As well as immortalising local Tipp heroes, the duo also get a bit deep on album track King of The Town. It’s their Bruce (Springsteen, not Forsyth, moment). “It’s hard to get too deep when you’re a comedy duo but that song is real,” says Johnnie B.

To paraphrase the mighty Saw Doctors, with whom they share more than a little rural DNA, was it a case of “if this is working in RTÉ, I want my old job back”?

“It’s about that time you come out of school and all your friends go to college and the two of us ended up working jobs in a small town and it’s a confusing time in your life.

“You meet a girl and you want to improve your life and do better and be all the things she wants you to be.”

What about the darker side of small-town life? “Yeah, like an episode of Pure Mule,” says Johnnie B. “The people who stay in their hometown, you find yourself being introspective and you do wonder if the grass is always greener on the other side, should we move away . . . “

“We did that before the 2 Johnnies,” says Johnnie Smacks. “I worked in a bacon factory and I wondered is this what I’m going to do every day? 9 to 5 and then go and get pissed at the weekend and then wake up Monday morning and do the same thing . . . and weeks become months and months become years.

“We’ve seen that and our songs look at that – is there more to life?”

Small Town Heroes really is a love letter to Tipp and that’s where it all began for the boys back in 2016. Johnnie Smacks was working as a butcher in SuperValu and Johnnie B was making hurleys while also trying to make it as a musician.

A shared love of showbiz saw them recording sketches and posting them online. That led to hosting gigs at GAA clubs and the rest is minor hysteria.

They both remain steadfastly home birds. “To live in a small town in Ireland is a wonderful thing,” says the worldly Jonnie B. “It doesn’t have the bright lights and it may not seem exciting but jaysus, I wouldn’t live anywhere else, like. I went to visit some friends who live along the commuter belt in Dublin recently and I just thought it was f***ing soulless.”

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Are they workaholics? “I think we have become workaholics,” says Johnnie B. “And you have to be a bit mad to do it, don’t you?” says Smacks. “I think all entertainers have a want in them,” continues Johnnie B.

“There’s always a feeling that there’ll be a new circus in town soon and it will all be over for us.

“I feel like we are in a bit of a hurry trying to do it all. We are really squeezing it in. same with the album, we feel like if we don’t do it, we’ll regret it for the rest of our lives.”

Do they still think it could all end tomorrow. “Not anymore” says Johnnie Smacks. “We both did in the early days because you don’t know what’s round the corner.

“We weren’t content with being the biggest show on 2fm. We wanted to be the biggest show in the country.”

“Now it’s not the fear that it’s not working, that’s not what drives us. Now it’s like we want to play bigger venues, we want bigger audiences . . . there’s a clear path. It used to be let’s keep going because it might end.

“Now, it’s more let’s keep going because it’s f***ing brilliant, let’s see where it can go . . . where’s next?”

Which leads us nicely into the topic du jour – to paraphrase the mighty Saw Doctors, with whom they share more than a little rural DNA, was it a case of “if this is working in RTÉ, I want my old job back”?

“So,” begins Smacks in the tone of a man who may have explained all this before. “With the podcast, we can record it when we like – nine o’clock in the morning, nine o’clock at night. We can do it on a Sunday . .

“With 2fm, it was every day live and we loved it, we loved it,” he says and I believe him. “We will be sad walking out of here on Friday but something had to give and we weren’t going to give up on our podcast, which we’ve worked so hard to build up, we weren’t going to give up our Patreon podcast or our music or our gigs.

“The easy thing for us to do would be to sign the three-year contract we’d agreed money on and half-arse the radio for three years and then f*** off – whereas what we’re doing is braver, the harder choice, giving up radio and concentrating on our music, podcasts and tours.

“We love the radio but the energy it would have taken to rejuvenate the show and keep it fresh for three years, I don’t think we had it, don’t think we had it . . . “

They’ve actually been out of contract with RTÉ since last February and their departure certainty creates a headache for the broadcaster.

But as Johnnie Smacks says: “We weren’t content with being the biggest show on 2fm. We wanted to be the biggest show in the country. We wanted the biggest podcast in the country, we have pretty much got there, we want to do the biggest live podcast gigs . . . we have no interest in coming second. We don’t like donkeys.”

And yes, they will be emotional when that red light blinks off on Friday. “We love the team we are very close to Aifric and Andrew and Caroline and the listeners,” says Johnnie B.

In fact, there are listening parties planned for Friday’s final show, which is a nice variation on people hitting the pub to watch Ryan Tubridy appear before the Oireachtas media committee last summer. “I only watched that to see Mattie McGrath,” says Johnnie B.

“Friday will be sad,” says Johnnie Smacks. “It will be sad but it will less of a funeral and more of a celebration.”

They’re out the gap but they’re not going anywhere.

Alan Corr @CorrAlan2